Page 1

A Digital Periodical of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Volume 8, Number 1 — March 2009

IARPP eNEWS

President’s ColumnJeremy Safran, New York

to be a wonderful sounding board for ideas and concerns. I feel very fortunate to be able to draw on the collective wisdom of Hazel, Stuart and Lew over the next couple of years, as well as the other members of our board. Expressing gratitude to some people for their contributions always carries the risk of alienating others, but I will take that risk by singling out two other people who have played a central role in guiding the development of IARPP and in helping me during my transition to the presidency: Margaret Black and Neil Altman.

I feel very fortunate to be taking over the presidency of IARPP at a time of tremendous health and vitality for our organization. In a short period of time IARPP has grown from one of Stephen Mitchell’s many inspired ideas, to a membership of approximately 700 in 2002, to a truly international organization with over

1000 members (1,117 to be exact at the time I am writing this column). We have members in 29 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, South America, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, England and the United States. And the number of local chapters continues to grow on an ongoing basis.

Now that we have

I am honored and excited to be following in Hazel Ipp’s footsteps as the fourth president of IARPP. Since becoming president-elect I’ve spent the last few months working closely with Hazel and have had the opportunity to develop tremendous respect and appreciation for her ability to deal with the countless complexities of organizational and political life, with consummate skill, unfailing grace and genuine warmth. I’d like to start off by thanking our past, past president, Stuart Pizer for nominating me for the position of president in the first place, and also by expressing my appreciation to him for the masterful job he did of shepherding IARPP through a challenging transitional phase. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Lew Aron, who led our organization through its birth pangs 8 years ago, and who although no longer formally a board member, has been and will continue

InsideIsrael Conference - pg 3

From the Editor - pg 5

Colloquium News - pg 6

Sydney AustraliaChapter - pg 7

Candidates Seminar - pg 8

continued on Page 2

Page 2

achieved a certain level of development and stability as an organization, the next few years hold both exciting opportunities and substantial challenges. One challenge involves our conceptualization of what constitutes relational psychoanalysis, and in fact our last on-line colloquium “The Question of Technique”, did a wonderful job of exploring this area. There will always be a tension between the desire on one hand to define relational principles and establish the boundaries of relational theory, and on the other hand to maintain the type of radical openness

and sense of dialogue that characterized the development of the relational approach at the beginning. In many ways relational analysis began as a critique of the mainstream, but what happens when the critique becomes the mainstream or becomes absorbed into the mainstream? As I see it, there are at least two questions here. The first is: To the extent that the relational approach resists definition, how do we teach it to a new generation of analysts and psychotherapists who are not already steeped in the tradition that the relational approach emerged in reaction to? The second is: What happens when revolutionaries become the establishment? What can we do to challenge the type of subtle complacency that inevitably emerges when the critique becomes the received view? To paraphrase Irwin Hoffman: “What happens when throwing away the book becomes the new book?” What are the subtle blind spots we experience that are easier for those who are outside of our tradition to identify?

Another challenge and opportunity for IARPP involves reaching out to and engaging in dialogue with clinicians outside of the psychoanalytic tradition. In part because of the sense of excitement and vitality associated with the development of the relational tradition, we can sometimes lose sight of the

fact that psychoanalysis is becoming increasingly marginalized around the world. Surveys demonstrate that the number of therapists identifying themselves with the psychodynamic tradition has continued to decrease on an ongoing basis. As the Director of a Clinical Psychology Program in an American university, I can tell you that the number of Ph.D. clinical psychology programs in the U.S. that provide students with substantial exposure to current developments in psychoanalysis can now be counted on the fingers of one hand. Psychoanalytic training institutes are finding it increasingly difficult to attract candidates. Decreasing sales of psychoanalytic books are forcing smaller psychoanalytic publishing houses to be taken over by large publishers, and a number of mainstream publishers are growing more and more wary of publishing psychoanalytic books.

While the number of alternative modalities to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented therapies continues to proliferate, the increasing dominance of the cognitive-behavioral tradition is pretty much a universal phenomenon. As somebody with a background in the cognitive behavioral tradition who still receives invitations to lecture to groups around the world who identify themselves

Safran, con’t from Page 1

continued on Page 10

2008 IARPP Board of DirectorsNeil Altman Anthony BassMargaret BlackPeggy CrastnopolJody DaviesMuriel DimenSusanna Federici-NebbiosiVirginia GoldnerHazel IppGianni NebbiosiSusie OrbachTessa PhilipsBarbara PizerStuart PizerPhil RingstromJeremy SafranAndrew SamuelsMalcolm SlavinJoyce SlochowerGary TaerkChana Ullman

IARPP eNewsEditor: Jill Bresler

IARPP WebsiteEditor: Larry Zelnick

IARPP AdministrationValerie GhentElisa Zazzera

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg2

Page 3

The process of holding and containing paradox and complexity is an important relational sensibility- one that will be helpful when contemplating our upcoming conference in these complicated times. As Philip Bromberg suggested years ago: “Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them—the capacity to feel like one self while being many”.

“Standing in the spaces” is an art, hard to master. More so when the realities we confront are harsh and our selves, the

selves we meet in such times are not always those that we like. We long for the selves that we cherish more, those we remember as our best, those which are more comfortable to identify as ours.

When we talk about selves, we are actually talking about self-other organizations. In traumatic situations the split between selves is rigid. As Jody Davies says, we need to provoke, find, and sustain badness clearly in the psychic domain of the other. Or we can talk in Sue Grand’s words about the paradox of innocence in those who perpetrate

2009 IARPP Conference - Tel Aviv, June 24 - 27

Shadows and Memories, Shadows and ForgettingHazel Ipp Toronto, Canada, Rina Lazar TelAviv, Israel,

Chana Ullman Rehovot, Israel

bodily violation, about insidious traumas and recruited mourning in Efi Ziv’s words.

All these people are speakers in our conference who will be dealing with the topic of traumatized memory and dissociation in panels we have included in this conference - an event that seems more and more relevant with each passing day. To whet your appetite, here is a sampling of these panels. In this conference we will be hearing important presentations such as: Meeting of Minds: The Need to Remember, the Wish to Forget (with Ruth Stein, Stephen Seligman, and Malcolm Slavin); Mourning and Melancholy ( with Rina Lazar, Sam Gerson and Gianni Nebbiosi ); and Ethics of Memory (with Avishai Margalit and Lew Aron). We will Waltz with Bashir with Emanuel Berman, Adrienne Harris Ari Folman and Mustafa Qossoqsi as we try to read the present through the lenses of our disavowed past and vice versa.

Our open large group - Memory in context: Processing being in Israel. with, Avi Berman, Irene

continued on Page 4

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg3

IARPP International ConferenceJune 24-27, 2009

David Intercontinental Hotel • Tel-Aviv, Israel

The Shadow of MemoryRelational Perspectives on Remembering and Forgetting

World-Renowned Speakers • New Voices Social and Cultural Events

For full conference program listings:

www.reg.co.il/iarpp/program.ehtml

Online registration available at:

www.reg.co.il/iarpp

Conference Co-Chairs: Hazel Ipp, Rina Lazar, Chana Ullman

Page 4

Melnick and Yitzchak Mendelson as moderators, offers a risky, but well timed opportunity to dialogue about the many complex feelings and thoughts that may accompany being in Tel-Aviv, Israel as human beings and professionals coming together in a difficult time in our history.. And finally, with the help of Jessica Benjamin, Suzi Nebbiosi and Neil Altman we will think about the link between memory and hope.

Along the way we will stop to ponder and discuss many additional important clinical topics.

Our group of invited speakers includes: Muriel Dimen , Jonathan Slavin, Chezy Cohen, Tamar Schonfield, Katie Gentile, Steven Knoblauch, Andrew Samuels , Joyce Slochower, Mitchel Baker, Boaz Shalgi, Donnel Stern, Darlene Ehrenberg, Ingrid Pedroni, Spyros Orfanos, Gabi Mann, Sophia Richman, Sharon Ziv Beiman, Cristina Bounucci, Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, Ariel Liberman, Ilana Laor, Michael Shoshani, Margaret Black, Alejandro D’avilla, Gary Rodin, Ken Corbett, Barry Magid, Stuart Pizer, Barbara Pizer and Ilan Treves.

With the help of this stellar group of speakers and more from the entire IARPP international community we will spend time together integrating our feelings, thoughts and experience as therapists dealing with shadows and

memories, shadows and forgetting.

We hope that the journey we offer you at these turbulent times will highlight the dialectic of despair, crisis and hope– We are sure the experience will be rich, meaningful and unforgettable.

The conference is first and foremost a time when the membership of IARPP will come together to think seriously about topics of human interest and concern. But we in Israel also look forward to sharing with you the beauty and pleasures of Israel. As in all IARPP International conferences we will offer you opportunities to enjoy the cultural energy and unique sites our locale has to offer. You are invited to join us at the beach- front of our conference hotel, to participate in the gala cocktail party and performance of the world renowned Bat-Sheva dance company, and to take advantage of tours to sites of universal importance. Among those tours, offered to conference participants and those who accompany them, we included a tour of Jerusalem with its rich tapestry of holy sites for three religions, as well as the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial. Registration to these tours is open through our registration site. In addition, our conference takes place in Tel Aviv, with its Bauhaus building style declared a world heritage site by EUNESCO in 2003, at the time the city celebrates its centennial (see

registration site, the hosting city). Many events, tours and exhibitions sponsored by the municipality of Tel-Aviv will be open during the days and evenings for our participants and their accompanying guests. During the conference we invite you to enjoy meeting, mingling and conversation at our common lunches. Note that at this conference lunches are included in the registration fee.

We are heartened by the intense enthusiasm for, and excitement about, this conference, by the many submissions and the number of people who have already registered and continue to register daily. Please be sure to sign up for this unforgettable event promptly.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Hazel Ipp, Rina Lazar, Chana Ullman

v

Ipp, Lazar, Ullman, con’t from Page 3

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg4

Want Help with Your Next Paper or

Presentation?

Contact the Writer’s Development

Program

at

writersprogram@iarpp.org

It’s as simple as that!(a benefit of membership)

Page 5

From the EditorJill Bresler, New York

This winter has been an exciting time in the U.S. We who live here have been enjoying a welcome and dramatic time of transition. We are looking forward with great anticipation , no less relief, to the changes a new U.S. administration will bring. IARPP is also undergoing a transition, but a smooth one, as one much appreciated President turns the position over to another. I had the pleasure of briefly working with Hazel Ipp last fall on the eNEWS, and look forward to serving Jeremy Safran moving forward.

The themes of newness and change seem like the themes of the moment, so I thought I’d alert you to some of the new things going on at IARPP. IARPP membership continues to increase steadily, and as membership increases, so does the number of regional chapters, and with that, chapter activities. By the time we go to press, a two day conference sponsored by IARPP-Espana will have been held in Madrid. At press time, this conference was completely subscribed, indicating the strong interest in the topic, “Relational Psychoanalysis today in the Global Society”. We

anticipate a report on this event in a later issue of the eNEWS. IARPP also co-sponsored an event in New York at the New School for Social Research in celebration of the launching of their Sandor Ferenczi Center. New York University’s Post-doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy will be celebrating the twenty-first birthday of its Relational track on March 7, with speakers from three generations of relational analysts. Strong interest in relational psychoanalysis continues to grow worldwide. Most recently, a UK chapter has been formed, headed up by Suzie Orbach. We look forward to interesting activities from this group. And in this issue, we have a message from the Australian chapter of IARPP. I had the pleasure of meeting some members of that chapter last year in Baltimore. They are an enthusiastic group, eager for dialogue with other relational analysts.

Some of the most popular IARPP activities are the educational activities, both on the internet and live. This year we have a great line-up of web seminars, now organized by Judy Pickles and Susan Bodnar. And Katie Gentile and Eyal Rozmarin are putting together this year’s web

colloquia, continuing that popular series. Information about the line-ups for both of these programs is also in this issue of eNEWS. And for those of you who are new, please note that the archives for these colloquia can be accessed by members, so you do not have to miss these wonderful discussions.

As an avid participant, I can tell you that the annual international conferences are unforgettable events. The opportunity to meet one another, to exchange ideas with each other, and to work and play together is very special. This year’s conference in Tel Aviv promises to be exceptionally stimulating, as the topic and the setting resonate with one another in a way that is quite remarkable. Be sure to read about what our program organizers, Rina Lazar, Chana Ullman and Hazel Ipp have in store this June. I hope many of you will be able to attend this event, which promises to be meaningful and memorable. v

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg5

NextIARPP Colloquium

May 11th - 24th. based on:

Gillian Straker’s A Crisis in the Subjectivity of the Analyst : The Trauma of

Morality&

Franz Fanon’s By Way of Conclusion

fromBlack Skin, White Masks

Page 6

2009 Online ColloquiaKatie Gentile and Eyal Rozmarin, New York

include theorists from other disciplines who’s works can come into meaningful dialogues with our own evolving notions of subjec-tivity, human relations and society/culture. We further hope to facilitate significant exchanges with other schol-arly organizations like IARPP both within and outside psychoanalysis. We hope to contribute in our corner of the psychoanalytic town square, to both deepen and extend the reach of relational psychoanalysis.

The first colloquium for 2009 will take place May 11th - 24th. It will center around two texts. We are very pleased that the first will be Gillian Straker’s “A Crisis in the Subjectivity of the Analyst: The Trauma of Morality” ; a paper about the dilemmas faced by an analysts whose patient is involved in violent resis-tance to the apartheid regime in South Africa. The second, serving as a counter-point, will be an

excerpt from Franz Fanon’s famous “Black Skin, White Masks”, titled “By way of Conclusion.” We have invited to the colloquium an international and inter-disciplinary panel of con-tributors. Our hope is to help facilitate a rich exchange about the considerations, responsibilities and dilem-mas implicating clinicians who work and think in the context of social/political tensions and outright violent struggles - tensions such as exist in all of our multi-racial, multi-group-identity societ-ies, violent struggles as was the case in South Africa and is now in other places around the world.

Our second colloqui-um for 2009 will take place in December. We are work-ing on it diligently and will communicate more about it shortly.

We look forward to participating in this grand international relational project. Katie and Eyal

v

As Bruce Reis and Dan Shaw bid their farewell we are thrilled to take over as co-chairs of the IARPP Colloquium series. We want to thank Bruce and Dan for all their hard and thoughtful work in establishing these colloquiums as eagerly anticipated international events.

We begin our tenure at a time when relational psychoanalysis is growing and maturing. We see it as our first objective that the IARPP online colloquia will continue to play the impor-tant role they have played in recent years in support-ing this process. Yet, this is a time when we can also look further. For this reason, we plan to work towards expanding the relational mission of our online col-loquia towards facilitat-ing exchanges between relational thinking, other psychoanalytic schools, and other intellectual com-munities. We plan for some of our future colloquiums to

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg6

Connect to the IARPP Community via the Members-only Intranet at

www.iarpp.org(link in upper right - orange text)

Access IARPP Membership Directory & Calendar of Events

Register for Web Seminars Post to IARPP Bulletin Board

Update Your Online Profile

Trouble logging in? email Elisa at office@mem.iarpp.org

Page 7

began to run foundational reading groups in order to offer members, particularly those who’ve had a more limited exposure to relational thinking, a context in which to read and engage with seminal papers. This was an exciting move into the area of education and development. And this year, we have invited a member of the Australian Psychoanalytic Society to run a Master Class reading group, on comparative psychoanalysis, which we hope will foster the development of relationships in the wider psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic community.

A great highlight for us towards the end of last year was a video link up using Skype, with Barbara and Stuart Pizer, in which 40 participants discussed two papers dealing with “non-negotiable” or “crunch” situations in the clinical setting. It was a treat for us to have such esteemed speakers in our midst, if only virtually. This year we hope to continue to have international guests and have asked Karen Maroda to “visit” us in the same way.

Since we are so far away, being relatively new and with limited financial resources our opportunity for international speakers is restricted. We hope

that others in the IARPP community might be interested in engaging with their Aussie colleagues either via video-link or, if anyone is holidaying in the area, we would love to have you come and speak to or meet with us. If there is anyone interested in such linking with us, we invite you to be in touch with us via Mary Bayles (SCIARPP President) at mbayles@bigpond.net.au.

v

Sydney Chapter of the

International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

SCIARPPMary Bayles, Mosman, Australia

The Sydney Chapter of IARPP (SCIATPP) is now more than a year old with a healthy membership of 53. Since we began SCIARPP has worked to develop its identity as an organization that seeks and promotes discussion and debate across psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic perspectives. To that end, we have invited speakers from diverse theoretical backgrounds, both within and outside our membership, to engage with one another and as a result have enjoyed a number of interesting speakers and discussion.

When we first began Lew Aron generously donated his time in helping us introduce SCIARPP to the Sydney therapeutic community. His presentation entitled “Is it practical to be a dreamer?” looked at the extent to which psychoanalysis is practical in today’s’ world. Later in the year, Gill Straker delivered a terrific integrative talk on five different listening perspectives. Gill took a broad view of how listening is theorized from different perspectives and discussed the controversies that inhere in how such views on listening translate to what we do clinically.

Last year, the Chapter

IARPP Local Chapters

United KingdomSusie Orbach

susieorbach@blueyonder.co.uk

IsraelRina Lazar

rlazar@post.tau.ac.il

SpainAlejandro Avila Espada

avilaespada@telefonica.net

AustraliaMarianne Kennedy

marianne@spia.com.au

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg7

Page 8

The Seminar with Jody Davies that occurred last September was a seminal event for IARPP and the Candidates Committee. It was held for the benefit of Candidates from around the world—and only candidates were invited. Jody offered the chance to discuss two of her seminal papers, “Whose Bad Objects are We Anyway: Repetition and Our Elusive Love Affair with Evil” and “Transformations of Desire and Despair: Reflections on the Termination Process from a Relational Perspective.” It was very special for the candidates to speak to her on such a fundamental level about papers nearly all of us had

read at their institutes. The first week of the

seminar was a special time for candidates, Jody, and the moderator, Lucyann Carlton, to meet and get to know one another in the Lounge. It was a great opportunity to become acquainted not only with one another, but with the essentials of the seminar itself. It was also the time to read the two papers—even if you had read them before.

The actual seminar started the second week in the seminar room, and Jody began to respond regularly to comments of the group. She was kind and interested-–and tantalized—

The Candidates Seminar with Jody Davies

by the various comments of the candidates. The two papers took up the entirety of the two weeks, and at the end, Jody asked the seminar committee if she could extend the seminar for a week. Unfortunately, there was no way to make that information available to the candidates, and the seminar had to end.

The Candidates Committee, which sponsored the event, consists of a group of candidates from around the world who meet each month to schedule events for candidates. The committee is headed by Deborah Pines and Orna

Web-Seminar Committee Co-Chairs Susan Bodnar and Judith Pickles announce:

IARPP Web-Seminars for 2009

continued on page 9

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg8

January 4 - 29 2010

The Clinical Implications of Attachment Theory Research

Faculty: David Wallin Discussant: Lew Aron Moderator: Margy Sperry

April 13 - May 10

How does psychoanalytic theory & practice still reflect its origins in the European colonial era? How might that change?

Faculty: Neil Altman Moderator: Ann Baranowski

September 7 - October 2

Candidates’ Seminar

Faculty/Moderator TBD

October 5 - 30

When the Third is Dead: Witnessing and the Creation of Meaning in the Aftermath of Trauma

Faculty: Sam Gerson Moderator TBD

November 2 - 24

Expanding Analytic Attention: The Weave of Embodied and Symbolized Communications

Faculty: Steven Knoblauch Mod: Nancy Vanderheide

2010

Page 9

Kislasy. The Committee is currently in the process of scheduling the Stephen A. Mitchell Award-winning paper to be given at the conference in Israel. (see page 10 for more details) And in addition, they are putting together a reception for candidates and analysts that will occur on the first day of the conference. (See article on candidates on page TK.)

The Seminar came into being because of the great work of Margaret Black, the Candidates Committee board sponsor, Judy Pickles and Susan Bodnar, co-chairs of the Web Seminar Committee, with the help of Jeremy Safran, who stepped down as chair of the committee in July, as well as the Candidates Committee.

Following are experiences of some of the members of the committee about the seminar.

Orna Kislasy, Co-ChairJerusalem, IsraelIt was a great

opportunity for me to read two related papers of Jody Davies very thoroughly and then to have the opportunity to read her own explanations about them. The participants’ questions and comments evoked more understanding of the subject of this seminar including interventions by a wonderful moderator, Lucyann Carlton. It was all very enlightening. It was a wonderful, interesting way to study and a very

“good way” to learn about “bad objects.” I highly recommend the seminar, so be sure to join

the next one coming this September.

Hilary OffmanToronto, CanadaThe seminar started

at exactly the same time that my analytic classes, so I signed up but didn’t participate as much as I would have liked. However, the opportunity to directly interact with an expert as fascinating as Jody Davies is an honor for any candidate. And I also realize now from my brief experience with the Candidates Committee how much I have already been impacted by my interactions with the members of the committee. In other words, I want to stress the wonderful opportunity these seminars provide for candidates to interact with each other and an expert in the field, the impact of which cannot be overestimated. I will definitely make more of an effort to participate more fully in subsequent seminars, especially once I finish classes in 2010.

Alioscia Boschiroli Turin, ItalyI attended the seminar

for the first 10 days and I participated in the discussion of the first Davies paper. It was very interesting and in some ways, very exciting. I truly liked and appreciated Davies availability, her affect, and the attunement expressed in her replies and suggestions. Apart from the specific contents of the discussion, Davies was always careful to consider what the other was telling her. It was a very good relational experience. In Italy it is not so easy to find an opportunity to discuss

a paper with a “big” personality like Davies is. For me as a non-native English speaker and with my “shaky” English, it was not always simple to follow the discussion carefully, but this was my problem. At the end I think it was a great opportunity to be directly in touch with an eminent personality in psychoanalysis today

Deborah Pines, Co-ChairNew York, New YorkThe seminar last

September was a joy. I loved all the input from candidates around the world and I loved the freedom each one felt to write whatever they experienced. Jody Davies’ papers were seminal in my training and to be able to discuss them with her and to hear what everyone was thinking and what she replied was a delight. The ability to be in touch with candidates and with Jody to discuss every aspect of her papers, to have the input of wonderful minds—and they are wonderful, even if they are candidates—was impressive. It was a great effort for me to participate in the seminar because I was recovering from an illness, but even so, the experience was terrific. I was sorry we couldn’t continue the seminar for another week, as Jody suggested, and I look forward to the seminar that is scheduled for September this year.

If you would like further information, please contact Deborah Pines at ploughman7@mindspring.com or Orna Kislasy at kislasy1@zahav.net.il

v

Candidate, con’t from Page 8

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg9

Page 10

constructive dialogue. I would also hope

that some within our organization will be willing to take up the challenge of how to engage constructively with the world of empirical research. Within more traditional psychoanalytic communities such as the International Psychoanalytic Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association, it is becoming apparent that psychoanalysts ignore the world of empirical research at their own peril. Constructive efforts are being made to encourage an interest in empirical research through the establishment of funding sources for research and publication of research articles in their journals. In general relational psychoanalysts have been somewhat

hesitant to engage the research literature, in part perhaps because of a justifiable skepticism about the epistemological assumptions underlying such developments as the evidence based treatment movement and a questioning of the clinical relevance of many research findings. One important exception to this common allergic reaction to empirical research has been a growing interest among members of our community in the areas of infant developmental and attachment research. I hope that in the future our organization is able to find a venue for exploring the potential interface between our concerns and the concerns of those who are actively engaged in empirical research of various types including

as either cognitive or integrative or both, I can assure you that there is a genuine hunger within these communities for psychoanalytic thinking, and relational psychoanalytic thinking in particular. I believe that is worth thinking about how to reach out to these communities – not just in an effort to proselytize but also in an attempt at genuine dialogue. At the same time, I am not wanting to minimize or overlook the importance of continuing to pursue dialogue with other psychoanalytic orientations. The world of psychoanalysis is too small for the various psychoanalytic orientations to live in isolation from one another or to engage in petty polemics rather than continued on Page 11

Safran, con’t from Page 2

IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg10

This year in Tel Aviv, the Candidates Committee and IARPP will present the Steven A. Mitchell Author’s Award. At the first major gathering of the conference in Tel Aviv, Margaret Black will present the award to Deborah Pines for her paper, “An Analytic Love Story: The Experience of Love and Hate in the Analytic Relationship.” The paper will be given at the Candidates Workshop at the conference and will be discussed by Stuar Pizer.

In addition the Candidates Committee will be holding a reception for all candidates on the first day of the conference. The party will be a place to meet and get to know the other members of IARPP, including many of the analysts whose writing you’ve been reading and thinking about in your training. And it is an opportunity to forge connections with other candidates from around the world. As an organization, IARPP is very interested in creating opportunity for the new generations of its membership, and the conference is an opportunity for existing and new members of the group to interact with one another in an intellectual and social context. The Committee is inviting all candidates to come to the party, and they particularly encourage those of you who are already thinking about coming to the conference to make the trip. IARPP conferences are intellectually rewarding, warm and inclusive. This year promises to be no exception.

A Message from the Candidates Committee and IARPP in Tel AvivOffers the Steven A. Mitchell Award and a Great Party

Page 11

instinct and civilization, the dark, chaotic nature of the unconscious and a tragic sensibility that was influenced by many factors including the experience of anti-semitism in Europe and two world wars. The development of relational analysis was initially influenced by many factors that are particularly American: for example a sense of optimism, individualism, a tendency to challenge social hierarchy and the type of pluralistic perspective associated with the tradition of American philosophical pragmatism.

For me personally, being an American (although I was born and grew up in Canada) who is accustomed to European characterizations of Americans as shallow, simple minded and naïve, I’m personally fascinated by trying to understand what aspects of relational psychoanalysis are most valued by non-Americans and eager to discover how relational psychoanalysis will be transformed as it is assimilated into other cultures. I am hoping that over the next two years I am able to play a role in encouraging the type of cross cultural interchange within IARPP that I believe holds unique promise.

And finally there is the general question of how to reach out to a general public that has a distorted and caricatured understanding of psychoanalysis, and that views it as a discredited relic of the past. This is

perhaps more problematic in the United States then it is in some other cultures. Argentina in particular stands out as a country in which psychoanalysis retains a respected role in the popular culture. Nevertheless, the progressive marginalization of psychoanalysis within the broader culture is a reasonably pervasive phenomenon, and the general public has little familiarity with the more progressive developments that have taken place within the relational tradition. I am thus enthusiastic about the possibility of thinking together of new ways of reaching out to a wider public audience over the next few years.

As it turns out, I happen to be writing this column the day of Barak Obama’s inauguration. It is a brief moment in history when for all the cynicism that Americans and people across the world have justifiably developed about the United States, many people experience a palpable sense of hope that the mere fact that Obama was elected is evidence that some of the tarnished ideals of American mythology: democracy, tolerance, opportunity, multiculturalism, respect for the rights of the individual, and so on, are more than just fictions.

Similarly, I would like to be optimistic that over the next few years we

psychotherapy research. I believe that it will be important for us to find ways of encouraging dialogue about foundational epistemological assumptions underlying various research approaches as well as the values implicit in them. Similarly I think it is important for us to engage in a critical conversation about the claims made by theorists involved in synthesizing psychoanalysis and the neurosciences and to explore the values implicit in privileging the neurobiological level over others.

Another challenge and opportunity involves dealing constructively with some of the challenges and strains that emerge out of truly becoming an international organization by finding ways of highlighting and exploring the impact that culture has on the development of selfhood and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis emerged slightly over 100 years ago in a primarily Jewish middle class milieu in the Austro-Hungarian empire and evolved into a variety of different permutations as it was assimilated and transformed by different cultures throughout the world: British, French, Italian, North American, Latin American and so on. Relational psychoanalysis emerged in the United States in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Freud emphasized the inevitable conflict between

continued on Page 12

Safran, con’t from Page 10IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg11

Page 12

can come a little closer to realizing some of the lofty- sounding ideals expressed in the rhetoric that adorns our IARPP web site. To quote: “IARPP is conceived of as a professional and intellectual community of individuals--clinicians and non-clinicians such as academics-- committed to developing relational perspectives and exploring similarities and differences with other approaches to analysis and psychotherapy. The spirit of relational psychoanalysis has led us to form our association in as non-hierarchical and as open a way as possible. We are committed to doing

away with privilege and discrimination in our field…we hope to encourage the formation of a space in which an open and democratic community of creative thinkers and practitioners can flourish. As an organization, our ethos reflects a love of healing and learning, not the consolidation of any particular professional interest approach.”

I look forward to getting to know many of you over the next couple of years and to working with you and the board to build upon the promising foundations we have already established. I would also like to encourage

members to e-mail me personally at jsafran@mem.iarpp.org if you have feedback about the organization. Although I can’t promise to answer every e-mail, I do promise to read all of them and to share your ideas and concerns with the board.

Finally, if any of you have special expertise in the area of internet and virtual media communications please contact me, since I’m hoping that IARPP can learn to make better use of the new information technologies over the next few years.

Jeremy SafranJanuary 20, 2009

Safran, con’t from Page 11IARPP eNews Vol 8 No1 March2009 pg12

We thankGary Taerk

Susie OrbachVirginia Goldner

for their service on the board

The IARPP Board is pleasedto announce that the

IARPP Membership has elected Donnel Stern

to the Board of Directors

Save the Date:February 25-28, 2010

IARPP Conference 2010

Expanding The Relational Context:

Sex

DesirePolitics

EconomicsAesthetics

Technologies

The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, California

Conference co-ChairsJeanne Wolff Bernstein, Ph.D.

Stephen Hartman, Ph.D.